Tuesday, December 6, 2011

Autism Behavior - Why Parents Need Strategies to Help

Autism Behaviors is probably one of the most difficult areas for a parent of a child with Autism to deal with on a day to day basis. Having a range of strategies is important. You never know which one will work when.

Strategies parents can use are Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT), ABA, depending on the child's age Floortime, and the list goes on. It is important to have more than one skill. Not all of the skills have to be as structured as ABA or CBT.

Autism Behaviors can be an easier area to deal with, notice I said easier, not easy. If you enlist some of the typical characteristics of Autism in your task of dealing with behavior. Many children with Autism are ritualistic.

Being ritualistic can be a plus when dealing with behaviors. If you can manage to teach a rule or a ritual before an undesirable behavior occurs our children will automatically go into the rule or ritual. Of course it takes many, many practices and discussions about what to do for this to work.

I have had success with the 'if; then' strategy with my child with Autism. The majority of children with Autism can learn two steps. In short the strategy was to teach her if something happens; the she should do something. Parents just fill in the 'somethings'.

More specifically we worked on 'If you want to bite yourself, then yell.' In our family it was more acceptable to yell. Well that is not entirely true. I decided yelling was more acceptable than having bite bruises that showed every tooth and broke the skin. It was my priority.

Mylinda Elliott is the parent of five children. The third of the five has Autism which was diagnosed early on. The fourth of the five children has Aspergers. She is a self taught expert on Autism Spectrum Disorders. Mylinda Elliott has also worked professionally in the disability world for the past fifteen years. She is considered the "Go To" woman for advice or resources on disabilities.